Stakeholder relationships

Teams and departments live or die by the relationships and reputations they manage to cultivate for themselves with different internal stakeholder groups. Threshold specialises in helping internal departments get the outcomes they desire in specific situations with stakeholders and to enhance the overall perception of their team or department.

The starting point for any form of influencing is rapport. Your people will be more effective rapport builders. Participants will learn to recognize the methods for developing authentic rapport. They develop the capability to seek out and make genuine connections.

Participants will develop a greater understanding of the impact of their choice of words. They will develop the capability, more readily to select words that are more inclined to have the desired impact on a stakeholder.

There are a range of influencing and persuading techniques that we share and encourage participants to practice. Many are simple but immensely powerful, they are often invisible to the uninitiated.

The combined effect of all of this is that leaders become proficient in conversational techniques that can rapidly re-position a dialogue to make sure that it moves in a direction that is likely to prove most helpful.

In challenging scenarios, with trained actors, delegates get to try out a number of different modes of communication. The act of practicing these will fine-tune their skills

Case Study BP Safety and Operational Risk

The Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico cost eleven lives and created one of the worst environmental catastrophes of recent times. As part of its response, BP set up the global Safety and Operational Risk team reporting directly to the main board. Never before had a safety operation been given such paramount commitment, resource and authority across all operations globally. However professionalism and knowledge of safety alone are not sufficient. To really make a difference, this team had to understand how to work effectively with human beings; how to influence stakeholders; and how to manage relationships. The role requires exceptional interpersonal skills. Senior people in safety and operational risk need to be simultaneously - colleagues, peers, trusted advisors and - where necessary - corporate ‘police’, frequently all at the same time.

Threshold worked in depth with Safety and Operational Risk to refine their ability to manage relationships when the stakes are high. We created a parallel world through interactive theatre, allowing delegates to interact with characters and scenarios and draw out important lessons. We replicated situations that they were likely to face, and required them to put the tools and techniques that they learnt into practice. One participant said that it was the best soft skills training there that he had ever had.